Tag: family

From His Holy Dwelling, God Sets the Lonely in Families

In between Eden and the New Jerusalem are we, the people of God, with the indwelling Holy Spirit.

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In my morning time with God and His Word, the following verses caught my attention:

“A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families. He leads out the prisoners with singing, but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land.”

Psalm 68:5-6

Other verses speak of God being a father to the fatherless and a defender of widows (and a lover of “the foreigner residing among you” (Deut. 10:18) and an upholder of the cause of the appressed (Psalm 146:7), but this hit in a different way today. God is a father to the fatherless and a defender of widows “in his holy dwelling.”

The Hebrew word translated “holy dwelling” is the word used to mean God’s tabernacle or temple. As John Walton and other Old Testament scholars say, the tabernacle and the temple are designs meant to remind us of the Garden of Eden, full of Edenic imagery. They were used to demonstrate God’s desire to dwell among His people, first in the tabernacle that was carried through the desert and stationed in the Tent of Meeting and later in the Temple in Jerusalem.

God allowed the Temple to be destroyed after Jesus came, died, and rose again, leaving the Holy Spirit to dwell with us and in us. The progression of the tabernacle, the Temple, and the Holy Spirit living in and among God’s people are all pointers to God’s ultimate plan and design:

“Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth,’ for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.””

Revelation 21:1-4

God is a father to the fatherless and a defender of widows in his holy dwelling. Since Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden, human beings have not dwelt with God in His holy dwelling. God has dwelt among His people in limited ways in the Tabernacle, and in the Temple, and (presently) in people who have received the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, but we have not lived with God in His holy dwelling.

Though God’s people have the comfort and guidance of the Holy Spirit in this world, this world is still on the other side of Eden, and this world as we know it will pass away. We await the new heavens, the new earth, and the new Jerusalem where God will dwell with His people.

In the meantime, though God is a father to the fatherless and a defender of widows in His holy dwelling. What does that mean? We are separated from God’s holy dwelling in this life. We are in between Eden and the New Jerusalem.

I believe it means that commissions those who have God in us (the Holy Spirit) to the “defend the weak and fatherless” and to “uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.” (Psalm 82:3) He commissions us to “care about justice for the poor” (Prov. 29:7), and He commissions us to love the foreigners living among us. (Deut. 10:19)

God is a father to the fatherless and a defender of widows in His holy dwelling. That is who God is in his inner sanctum. That is who God is at the core of his being. God “sets the lonely in families,” and “God leads out the prisoners with singing.” This is God’s very heart at the core of his being. This is who God is, and this is who we should be as His children.

Continue reading “From His Holy Dwelling, God Sets the Lonely in Families” →

On Being Salt (and Light) in the World

kevingdrendel4 Comments

This blog post is inspired by today’s sermon where I go to church. The sermon was the last in a series about how followers of Christ are called to have an impact on the world. The text is out of Matthew, known as the Sermon on the Mount:

“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.  You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.” Matthew 5:13-14 ESV

The themes here are salt and light. God calls His people to be salt and light in the world. These should be familiar concepts, but it always helps to dive a little deeper into the things we think we already know, and it doesn’t hurt to be reminded and encouraged to live them out.

I will preface my thoughts with a personal story I have told before. In high school and college, I found in myself a yearning to go off in the woods and retreat from society. That feeling might have been originally inspired by reading My Side of the Mountain when I was in grade school.

My Side of the Mountain was about a young boy who left his home for the woods of the Catskill Mountains where he took up residence in a hollow tree. He fended for himself in the quiet and solitude of nature, taming a peregrine falcon in the process, in a very idealistic depiction of life alone in the Eden of nature.

You probably won’t be surprised to know that I was very drawn to Henry David Thoreau. That kind of contemplative life lived alone in the peace and abundance of the outdoors was alluring to me. Even after I became a believer in college, my personal dream included peace, quiet, solitude and nature.

I am still drawn to that, but God took me through a college class in which I realized that God was calling me to the noise, bustle and busyness of society – despite my reluctance. It seemed like a personal paradigm shift to me, and it was; but it really wasn’t as profound a revelation (or shouldn’t have been) as it seemed at the time.

I won’t bore you with the details here, but I realized that I couldn’t (and shouldn’t) run from the encroachment of “civilized” society on that idyllic vision of personal utopia. I needed to turn and face it. I realized God was calling me to engage the world and not run from it.

Throughout history, religious believers of various kinds formed groups that cloistered themselves from the world. From monasteries to modern communes, the tendency to want to run from the grit and grime and dirt of humanity and human institutions is a strong idealist and religious theme, but not one, it seems, God wants most of us to pursue.

That is because He calls us to be salt and light.

As I listened to the sermon today, it dawned on me that salt is only effective when it comes in contact with food. It’s purpose in drawing out the flavor of food and in preserving it can only be realized when salt is in close contact with it. Salt can’t flavor or preserve food it doesn’t touch. Continue reading “On Being Salt (and Light) in the World” →